ASP.NET MVC

What is the MVC Pattern?

MVC stands for:

• Model: Represents the data and business logic
• View: Handles UI and rendering
• Controller: Processes user input and coordinates the model and view

This separation of concerns helps keep code organized, especially as applications grow.

Creating an ASP.NET MVC App

Use the Visual Studio template:

1. Open Visual Studio → New Project → ASP.NET Core Web App (Model-View-Controller)
2. Choose target framework (.NET 6 or later)
3. Click Create

The project will have folders for:

• Controllers/ – C# classes to handle requests
• Views/ – Razor templates for UI
• Models/ – Classes for data and logic

Example: Controller

using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;

public class HomeController : Controller
{
    public IActionResult Index()
    {
        return View(); // Returns Views/Home/Index.cshtml
    }
}

Example: View (Razor)

Create Views/Home/Index.cshtml:

<h1>Welcome to MVC</h1>
<p>The current time is 4/3/2025 1:31:52 PM</p>

Passing Data from Controller to View

Use ViewBag, ViewData, or strongly-typed models:

// Controller
public IActionResult About()
{
    ViewBag.Message = "This is a sample message.";
    return View();
}

// View
<p></p>

Handling Forms and Routing

Use model binding to handle form data and route it to controller actions:

<form asp-action="Submit">
    <input name="username" />
    <button>Go</button>
</form>

// Controller
[HttpPost]
public IActionResult Submit(string username)
{
    return Content("Hello, " + username);
}

ASP.NET MVC is ideal for structured, testable, and scalable web apps. Next, we’ll dive into Entity Framework Core to learn how to connect your application to a database.